Nvidia: We Expected More from AMD Radeon HD 7970.

Perhaps, the launch of the Radeon HD 7970 graphics card powered by Advanced Micro Devices’ latest Southern Islands/GCN (graphics core next) was not the most impressive one as it was a rush announcement two days ahead of Christmas. But AMD does have a next-gen GPU on the market, unlike its major rival Nvidia Corp., a clear advantage. But the latter claims that the model 7970 fails to impress.

“Honestly, we expected more from our competitor’s new architecture,” an unnamed official Nvidia initiative told NordicHardware web-site.

Nvidia itself has been astonishingly quiet about its next-generation The company has learnt its lesson when it unveiled code-named Fermi architecture about half a year ahead of actual release and would like to ensure instant availability of next-generation graphics cards after the formal launch, according to unofficial information. At present Nvidia considers scheduling the launch of code-named Kepler products on March or April. Officially, the company claims that its Kepler will be released in the first half of 2012.

While the launch of the AMD Radeon HD 7970 was rather weak in terms of publicity and in many other terms, it is clear that today, around a month after the formal product announcement, AMD has actual new-generation graphics cards on the market. Meanwhile, it will take another two or more months for Nvidia to start selling its next-gen GeForce GTX 780-series. Naturally, Nvidia is interested in slowing down sales of AMD’s code-named Tahiti graphics solution so that to satisfy delayed demand for high-end graphics boards later this year.

Kepler is Nvidia's next-generation graphics processor architecture that is projected to bring considerable performance improvements and will likely make the GPU more flexible in terms of programmability, which will speed up development of applications that take advantage of GPGPU (general purpose processing on GPU) technologies. Some of the technologies that Nvidia promised to introduce in Kepler and Maxwell (the architecture that will succeed Kepler) include virtual memory space (which will allow CPUs and GPUs to use the "unified" virtual memory), pre-emption, enhance the ability of GPU to autonomously process the data without the help of CPU and so on. Entry-level chips may not get all the features that Kepler architecture will have to often. Production of Kepler chips was supposed to start in Q4 2011.

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3.

You could say in 1 years Nvidia will have something faster and that HD7970 is not that great VS what we have coming out in 1 years from now... but AMD plan to release the HD8970 shortly after Nvidia show off what they have.

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4.

I've read than Nvidia was going to release the next generation of their GPU later this year but they changed the date to Q2 2012.
This is not a normal change, something is wierd there, either they are really afraid that they are improving slower than the competition demands or they've done something big and they can release it earlier.
Time will tell.

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5.

AMD is second tier in graphics, the same like with CPU. GCN is pure fail, wasted available resources. Only thanks to TSMC with their 28nm, AMD somehow marginally saved his face. Only Nvidia and Intel have real power in every dimension.

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well truth is that AMD has a 22% market share, nvidia 17% , intel has the rest. Sure some of these are APUs not all discreet, still AMD (ATI) has proved in the last few years to be able to deliver the best performance per real estate, making their chips cooler, small and hence, cheaper.

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Because they charge an arm and a leg for their products that are not always better than what AMD has to offer. Raping your customers wallets is something Intel and Nvidia have in common. Some would call that extortioin rather than business.

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No Nvidia owns its intellectual property, employees, and products but nobody owns a market. A market is never owned in the sense that the numbers can change drastically and quite quickly. It is more shared than owned, nvidia just has a bigger piece of it which can change hands quite quickly

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Considering it was a transition to 28nm I was expecting a lot more of the 7970 card, It isn't the huge jump a lot of gamers were expecting from a die shrink. I hope Nvidia has something better, I am an Nvidia user BUT I want AMD to release high end cards and cheap cards to keep Nvidia in check. Competition is good for all of us whichever side of the fence you sit, Unfortunately there aint much competition from Nvidia's words alone, Gimme silicone! lol

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Guys seriously, faster than a 580 gtx in 90% of the gaming benchmarks, uses as much power as a 5970 with the same die size and increased number of transistors and complexity. Some of you are really under-evaluating their achievements. Regards